So Craig Venter's "creation" of life is threatening to destroy the earth, or so a curious alliance of the Daily Mail and greenies would have us believe. In fact, all Venter has done is copy some DNA as a new strand and injected it into pre-existing cells - an impressive achievement but of itself not radical. In any case, far from bringing global germ warfare perilously closer, as the Mail and the veggie brigade would have us believe, it makes absolutely no difference. Maybe the Greens and Angry of Tunbridge Wells have never heard of smallpox, anthrax, Ebola, West Nile fever, typhus.... Whatever Venter may be guilty of, you can't blame him for stockpiling huge quantities of the above and weaponising them.
What exactly is Venter guilty of? The worst that anyone can say is that he mixes science with business. Considering that the man completed the human genome sequencing project in less than half the time projected by the academics who were planning to do the same thing, I'd say he has given the human race more than a decade's head start on preparing treatments and cures for genetic illnesses. How many lives has he saved? How many millions of man-years of suffering has he alleviated? More than the Mail's Paul Dacre, I'll bet.
Thursday 27 May 2010
Friday 7 May 2010
The Result and the Implications
Well, my prediction was wrong. The Tories failed by around 20 seats to procure the majority they needed to rid the country of Gordon Brown's inept leadership. Labour, in that self-deluding manner of theirs, have kidded themselves that the electorate, in refusing vote Cameron into Number Ten Downing Street, have instead endorsed a further period of Brownite rule, even though Labour trailed the Tories by 50 seats and 7% overall.
Indeed, the individual fluctations of fortune, if anything, shielded Labour from a further massacre. The Tories achieved swings of 11% in seats where a 3% swing would have won them the constituency, and swings of 5% where 6% was needed. A more even distribution would have cut the gizzard from the decomposing Labour party, in much the same way that even the slump to 23% suffered by Cleggy merited more than 50 seats over all. Electoral reform will be at the top of the agenda for whoever takes office.
Gordy, of course, remains PM until he resigns, and there is not much chance of that until a fresh election is called, either by a no-confidence vote (likely) or until due course forces an election after five years of dead duck governance. Labour, in Labour's view, has a moral right to retain office, possibly as part of a so-called "progressive alliance" of Labour and the LibDems.
In reality, that will not be sufficient. Labour and the Lib Dems between them can must only 315 of the 326 seats needed. 3 further seats will be available in the form of the Labour-affiliated SDLP in Ulster, but that will leave Brown 8 short. Sinn Fein's usual refusal to attend Westminster brings the threshold down to 323, so Gordy will need the 9 seats of the SNP-PC alliance to tip the scales in his favour.
Much was made on the pro-Labour BBC of the fact that, lacking any MPs in Ulster, and having only 1 in Scotland, the Tories would have no right to govern either of these countries. But, apart from Nick Robinson, no BBC hack was willing to express the converse opinion.
75% of Westminster's time is spent dealing with matters not affecting Scotland directly as these are devolved affairs, and Gordon Brown is de facto PM of England 75% of the time and PM of the UK the other 25%. For those wondering why Labour refused to establish an English legislature in 1999 to match those in Scotland and Wales, the following figures may enlighten:
Out of 533 seats in England, 297 declared for the Tories, 191 for Labour and 43 for the LibDems, a Tory majority of 63. If Blair had granted an English Parliament in 1999, that Parliament, the 50 million people it represented, and the bulk of the UK economy (including that part providing the subsidies for the Celtic nations) would have been in unshakeably Tory hands. Blair foresaw this day, and decided that England must remain forever shackled to a Celtic chain.
Yet 6 SNP and 3 PC MPs, representing no more than 900,000 Scottish and Welsh people, will hold the whip hand over one of the largest and richest nations in Europe. Given that the SNP and PC have NO mandate at all in England, complaints about the rectitude of Tory rule over Scotland and Wales seems rather hypocritical.
And if Brown is stupid enough to use the SNP and PC to support his miserable government, the inevitable cuts to English public services may at last persuade the English taxpayer to copy the rioting of their Greek counterparts.
Indeed, the individual fluctations of fortune, if anything, shielded Labour from a further massacre. The Tories achieved swings of 11% in seats where a 3% swing would have won them the constituency, and swings of 5% where 6% was needed. A more even distribution would have cut the gizzard from the decomposing Labour party, in much the same way that even the slump to 23% suffered by Cleggy merited more than 50 seats over all. Electoral reform will be at the top of the agenda for whoever takes office.
Gordy, of course, remains PM until he resigns, and there is not much chance of that until a fresh election is called, either by a no-confidence vote (likely) or until due course forces an election after five years of dead duck governance. Labour, in Labour's view, has a moral right to retain office, possibly as part of a so-called "progressive alliance" of Labour and the LibDems.
In reality, that will not be sufficient. Labour and the Lib Dems between them can must only 315 of the 326 seats needed. 3 further seats will be available in the form of the Labour-affiliated SDLP in Ulster, but that will leave Brown 8 short. Sinn Fein's usual refusal to attend Westminster brings the threshold down to 323, so Gordy will need the 9 seats of the SNP-PC alliance to tip the scales in his favour.
Much was made on the pro-Labour BBC of the fact that, lacking any MPs in Ulster, and having only 1 in Scotland, the Tories would have no right to govern either of these countries. But, apart from Nick Robinson, no BBC hack was willing to express the converse opinion.
75% of Westminster's time is spent dealing with matters not affecting Scotland directly as these are devolved affairs, and Gordon Brown is de facto PM of England 75% of the time and PM of the UK the other 25%. For those wondering why Labour refused to establish an English legislature in 1999 to match those in Scotland and Wales, the following figures may enlighten:
Out of 533 seats in England, 297 declared for the Tories, 191 for Labour and 43 for the LibDems, a Tory majority of 63. If Blair had granted an English Parliament in 1999, that Parliament, the 50 million people it represented, and the bulk of the UK economy (including that part providing the subsidies for the Celtic nations) would have been in unshakeably Tory hands. Blair foresaw this day, and decided that England must remain forever shackled to a Celtic chain.
Yet 6 SNP and 3 PC MPs, representing no more than 900,000 Scottish and Welsh people, will hold the whip hand over one of the largest and richest nations in Europe. Given that the SNP and PC have NO mandate at all in England, complaints about the rectitude of Tory rule over Scotland and Wales seems rather hypocritical.
And if Brown is stupid enough to use the SNP and PC to support his miserable government, the inevitable cuts to English public services may at last persuade the English taxpayer to copy the rioting of their Greek counterparts.
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